The defense is slipping…but is it a bad thing?

All things being equal I think more defense is better than less defense in the NBA. Or put differently I think that playing more stout defense is better for your team goals than flimsy defense.

So far this season as we all know the Thunder have hung their hat on terrific defense and sort of average or middling offense. It’s been a good formula; turning a 23 win team into a 41 win team (thus GUARANTEEING a winning season) with 17 games to go. How cool is that?

But if you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably noticed that the defense has been slipping a bit lately. The team certainly still has a defensive mentality, and a defensive identity, but lately we haven’t seen the team get out and just stuff the opponent for 48 minutes. Instead what we’ve seen is the Thunder playing sort of “situational” defense, where for example in the New Jersey game the team played just good enough defense to keep them down 10 or so until a couple of big threes had them threatening. The Thunder then tightened up the defense for a couple of possessions to seal the win. Rather than play all out D every possession I think we are seeing the team play say 75% of it’s defensive intensity for a lot of the game and then really getting after it when the situation gets tense or out of a timeout when the Coach is imploring them to tighten it up. We’ve seen that a number of times lately.

The numbers bear out the idea of a slipping defense. For a big chunk of the season the Thunder were tops in the league in opponent FG%, allowing the other team to shoot somewhere in the area of .430. Now the team is third at .441 allowed. By Defensive rating the team has dropped from a usual 3rd or 4th best to 6th best. Last night the Thunder let the Utah Jazz who score an average of 107.5 points per 100 possessions drop 118 pts/100 and score 111 points in our house with three key players out. The Nets dropped 102 on us; the Kings dropped 102 and 107 on us, the Nuggets dropped 119 on us, the Wolves dropped 107, the Knicks dropped 118…

I say all this as an example, but the point I am driving at is the fact that the defense is slipping necessarily a bad thing?

Again, more defense is preferable to less defense, but in the Thunder’s case, maybe it’s not so bad to have an “opportunistic” or “situationally” strong defense if there is a benefit on the other side.

The goal is of course to win games, and the Thunder have won 5 in a row and only lost 3 of it’s last 20 games, but surprisingly the Thunder have been doing it with a better balance of offense and defense. I don’t know exactly how or why, just that while the Thunder defense has been slipping a bit, the offense has been more than making up for void.

For most of the season the Thunder have been in the bottom half of the league in offensive rating (points scored per 100 possessions) in the area of 106 points scored per 100 possessions. The Thunder have been slowly creeping up the ladder and now find themselves in the 14th spot, breaking into the top half of the league and now averaging 107.1 points per 100 possessions. This is no small feat considering just how terrible our offense was last season with the same cast for the most part.

As an example, in the last 13 games (since the Knick game, where the numbers seemed to have turned) the Thunder have scored at an offensive rating of 109.23 points per 100. That’s excellent. Meanwhile the defense has slipped a bit to 104.6 points per 100 allowed. The difference between the two is the efficiency differential, which is at +4.63 over the last 13 games. That’s also excellent. For most of the season the efficiency differential has been somewhere around +3.5.

Using the Pythagorean formula a +4.63 efficiency differential would net us about 11.4 wins over the remaining 17 games, or 52 wins or so for the season. The point being that while the defense had indeed slipped a bit, the offense has picked up enough that by the numbers the team is actually experiencing a net positive boost in efficiency because of improved offense.

Granted the last 13 games have only seen us match up against 4 serious deep playoff threats so some of this should be taken with a grain of salt, but the fact remains that the offense has improved more than the defense has slipped for whatever reason.

Good point about the ballhandlers on fast-paced teams. What I thought was notable about the list was that OKC runs a much slower game than the Warriors or the Suns, and yet we have two players in the top 5. Even accounting for the fact that the Westbrook and Durant are the primary ballhandlers, I don't really like how BOTH of them are on there. If one or the other were there, that would be one thing, but having both is a little worrying.

@BenAnother important factor in steals given up is how often you have the ball. Ellis and Curry have the ball a lot for a very fast paced team, so there is a lot of opportunity. Nash makes a fast Phoenix offense run, and so has the ball a ton also. Where do our guys fit in? We run a much slower game but those two have the ball most of the time. I think both would improve with better dribbling, or at least avoiding traffic more with their dribble.

On the topic of defense, here's an interesting stat: 2 of Thunder's players (Durant and Westbrook) are in the top 5 of players who have had the ball stolen from them this season. Something for the players to keep in mind, since for the most part having the ball stolen off you is a matter of concentration than anything else. Surprised to see Nash at #1 though.

I definitely like the idea of the offense opening up more, against Utah we ran a lot of PnR with Russ / Collison, had some great cuts (the Durant to Green play) and generally saw a lot of things we didn't see much during the start of the year.

Our brand of defense, the swarming, contesting, always in motion takes a lot of energy. With guys like Durant and Green playing 40 minutes a night, it's asking a lot for them to be supremely active on both ends. I like the balance better, so long as the offense is working.

I still think a legitimate defensive anchor, who could rebound and block shots would make our margin for error much bigger defensively.

I agree with jax our D in transition and against teams that push the pace can be terrible. We give up a lot penetration and open looks under the basket. Also it's difficult to work hard on D if you are up by 10 points. Although I think they have not learned how much they can slack off with the lead, and therefore take it a little too easy at times and let teams back into the game. We are a very young team after all and young teams seem to struggle with the mental aspects of the game.

Maybe you think it shouldn't be legit, but it is. We don't play great defense against fast paced teams. We generally win those games, so the defense is good enough to win, but it isn't the brand of defense we expect to see.

@Jax Raging Bile DuctI just don't think pace should be a legitimate reason for our issues. Besides Phoenix and Denver (losses), the fast paced teams we faced were bad offensive teams. The main games to note were Sacramento and Minny, and we couldn't stop either team on the run or in sets.

I'm not trying to tear up your argument, but I'm just more concerned perhaps than I need to be.

@Jax Raging Bile DuctI don't think we can just toss out things because teams run a fast pace. Toronto is fast, and has a good offense, but they were also missing Bosh, the literal foundation of their team. Sacramento scored easy on us twice despite being a bottom 10 defensive team. The scariest thing to look at is that the only good offensive team we beat was Utah. Everyone else we've faced since Dallas (right after the big trade) has been a below average offensive team or a loss.

It's very disconcerting that we are playing such mediocre defense against such mediocre offenses.

We've played several fast-paced teams over those 13 games as well. I think that has to be considered. I know that the stats are per possession, which accounts for pace, but the Thunder are a team that does not play it's best defense against fast paced teams. We locked down on the Hornets last week. The lowly clippers managed 87 points. We held Dallas to 86 and Toronto to 99 (which sounds like a lot, but not for the Raptors - if you remember we were up by about 4000 points and our bench players let the Raps score at the end).

But in any case, the defense has slipped, but we've been ahead in many of those games, for most of the game, and most of those leads have been by double digits. So as far as the numbers go, I can see where we're slipping. But I can also see that we didn't need that defense to bring it's A+ game in order for us to comfortably win either (save a few games I mentioned).

Top 3 offense and middle of the pack defense (our last 13 games) is about where the Suns routinely fell under D'Antoni. Great for the regular season, still unproven in the playoffs.

I would take that if it is where we intend to be, as I think the Suns lack of a championship had more to do with luck (suspensions, injuries) and dominant teams (Spurs in their prime) than a bad system. But, I don't think that is Brooks' plan.

Defense generally makes the greatest impact early in the season. Offenses are rusty and are forced to face every different look a defense has. As the season goes on, defenses are figured out, teams exploit the holes with more regularity and vigor, and defense falls more to individual players. I'm very glad the Thunder are a net positive from this new offense-defense rating, but I am a little wary that this may have something to do with individual desires.

Players like to score, like to run, and like to beat their opponent. It's the reason the Suns/Warriors almost always get their opponent to fall into their pace during the regular season. The defensive system we have is keeping us together, but a 104 rating is only league average defense. 109 on offense is elite offense, but winning with offense is a rather poor turn for a team like ours. We are a still a jump-shooting team, remember, and the offense simply will not always be there. Defense will, if we want it.

Sorry, didn't finish my thought in my previous post. It was something along the lines of, "Who'd have thought that at this point in the season, we could wind up with double our win total from last year and yet be vaguely disappointed because we feel we should have done better?"

41 wins doesn't QUITE guarantee us a winning season. It does, however, guarantee us a .500 season. Seriously, who would have thought that with 17 games to go in the season, we'd be able to say, "All they have to do is win just ONE of their next seventeen games, to get a winning season?" And lest we forget, it only takes five wins the rest of the way to double what we did last year...

Actually, scratch that. I'm an idiot. Russ was 7th in February in AST/TO, but behind low-usage guys or backups (Sundiata Gaines and Hamed Haddadi among them). Among starting PGs, he led the league with a 4.40 ratio. That's STELLAR.

After the all-star break, Westbrook has been averaging 9.7 assists, while only turning it over 3 times per game. That's a 3.23 AST/TO ratio, and it's the single biggest reason that our offensive efficiency has really taken off. Russ was 5th in the league in AST/TO ratio in February.

He's clearly becoming comfortable within the offense, and he knows the tendencies of every player from KD to Ibaka. What does this mean? I can definitely see us getting 50+ wins and getting to the second round, depending on the matchup.

We're only going as far as Russell takes us... but with the way he's playing I really like our chances to make some noise for the rest of the season.